The IEEE 802.16m standard, currently under development, is an enhanced update to the existing IEEE 802.16e standard. The IEEE 802.16m standard allows MSs to transmit bandwidth requests (BRs) to indicate to the BS that the MS needs an uplink (UL) bandwidth allocation. The MS can request BW from the BS by: 1) Contention based random access based bandwidth request indicator; 2) Standalone Bandwidth request; 3) Piggybacked bandwidth request carried in an extended header in the MAC PDU; and 4) Bandwidth request using fast feedback channel.